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EPISODE 36

"Here we go," Jake began. "On the fourteenth, you did not report to work, nor did you advise the Waldo Gray Insurance Agency of your intent not to report on the fifteenth or sixteenth. This protracted absence is a gross violation of company policy, and you have been terminated retroactive to 5:01 PM, the afternoon of the eleventh, with appropriate forfeiture of benefits, including pension, health and life insurance. Your final paycheck, less charges, will be mailed to you upon return to the Waldo Gray Insurance Agency of your identification, and any other items of company property you may possess. Yours sincerely…" Jacob added, allowing the termination letter to slump to the edges of his fingers like a dead cat… "Waldo Gray."

"That fat, two-timing monster!" Mrs. Harwood beseeched them. "Henry did not report to work because he had been lying in the morgue since Sunday afternoon... dead!... and his policies are all tied up because of Waldo. Someday I'll have my trailer in Florida but, for now, I'm living on pork and beans and spaghetti without even money for tomato sauce, and Waldo and the bank and the hospital people are trying to sell our house for half of what it's worth!"

"That son-of-a-bitch," Wayne declared, gun out and moving as he cased the room for targets. The masks? The hi-fi? The galoshes in the closet... the dog? Timmy?"

"And that isn't all," the widow added. "Henry's will's full of technicalities that Waldo's lawyers put in, and they had to bury him in the cheap section of the cemetery. He wouldn't have even had a monument, if Waldo hadn't sent one."

Betty stepped back. "Well, that goes to show that Waldo can't be all that bad," she answered, neatly, "since he paid for a monument for Henry..."

"That's what you say," Anne retorted, her anger curdling into deliberate and polar scorn. She hurled her empty glass into the fireplace and swallowed champagne from the bottle while the guests waited, breathlessly, with bended ears...

"It was covered," she said, "with advertising! Waldo Gray Insurance advertising!"

Nat King Cole trailed off, and the hi-fi rejected.

In this pulse of wintry silence before the music reincarnated, half a dozen angry conversations sprang up - everyone reviling and denouncing Waldo. Just beneath this hubbub, Howard heard the tinny whining of the Bloodmobile as it crept back towards the house.

Harvey returned from his foragings with some still-frozen shrimp, a pineapple ring dangling from the edge of his mouth. "This place smells like a whorehouse," he sniffled. The dinner guests looked at him with expressions variously asking how he'd know, and returned to their plots and their lamentings. "Do you mind?" Harvey said to nobody, and then opened the window.

The Bloodmobile, its speakers trembling with determination in the autumn night, infused the room with propaganda, "...petitioning for the prompt removal of fluorescent lighting from our schools, and establishing swift and certain penalties for the violation of these standards. Together, we can save the children!"

"That was William Blood," a stronger, nearer voice explained, "your voice in government. Experience, integrity, incumbency! The wishy-washy postures of the challenger..."

"Way to go!" bellowed Harvey, leaning out the window and almost tumbling to the porch. "We want Blood! We want Blood!" he bleated, raising a fistful of shrimp.

Jacob and the phony beatnik led him back, away from danger, to a corner... enduring, as they did, a veritable torrent of babble.

"He'll really do it, Mr. Blood. He will! Take good care of Waldo. If we keep our faith..."

"Sure, Harv," Jake muttered, and he plugged a nearly-empty champagne bottle in the salesman's mouth. Harvey stopped his snucklings and his snufflings, and sucked at the like a greedy infant.

"But, do you know what still pisses me off?" Jacob said as he and Zack... or, rather, William, the schoolteacher... passed by Howard. "Waldo! Just the other day, right after work, he told me to bring him his manual. Well what the hell, the secretaries had all gone home. I got it. Wouldn't you? Only I give it to him upside down. Man... he hits the fuckin' ceiling!"

All the salesmen leaned closer to listen. Jacob nodded, and the salesmen nodded back, including Howard. In removing Harvey from the window, Jake had found himself in possession of two frozen shrimp. He raised them up for scrutiny. The shrimp were still hard, just as frozen as if no time had transpired since dinner.

"I can't know if you're just stupid, Waldo told me, or a chronic insubordinate." The salesmen nodded. Jacob threw the frozen shrimp angrily aside. "But I suspect the former. Former! As if his goddam fat fingers were too lazy to turn that manual around himself..."

Glowering, having revealed more than he'd prepared himself to say, he raised his leg and tried to grind one of the shrimp into the carpet, but it was hard, and slippery... and he had to dance a little jig to keep from falling.

"Maybe somebody should close the window," Betty suggested.

Wayne twirled his pistol contemptuously. "Yeah, baby, close the window. Close the window, bar the door, turn on the TV... vote for Vogoroff and watch the country go to hell. Blood will fix their wagon... all of them! The eggheads and the doomsayers, with their fluorescent lights." Harvey grinned and extended a greasy hand, which Wayne slapped away with a snarl. "Bring me more champagne! And how about some of them shrimp?" he pointed with his firearm. "I'm still hungry!"

He waved the gun so menacingly that Ruth and Beatrice hastened to the dining room and returned, wheeling the tray with the block of ice, and all its frozen shrimp.

"I think they're still a little cold," Beatrice apologized as they wheeled it up next to the coffee table.

"Harvey made a mess of all the rest of dinner," Ruth informed Wayne, also keeping a sharp eye on the gun.

"Oh!" Wayne tucked the gun in his belt and picked up one of the shrimp. Still frozen. "Bet you like 'em this way, baby," he needled Betty. "Cold and small, just like you and mumbles here, standing around griping 'bout Bad China while Waldo sells our butts off to the Canucks."

"I'm not just griping," Howard broke in, petulantly. "There's a big dead plastic president in the kitchen, and it's all the fault of Waldo and his blue champagne. Harvey would back me up, if he weren't so damn drunk. See for yourself!"

"Oh Howard," Mrs. Harwood scolded, "things are bad enough without your wild stories. There's no class in distracting us with your hallucinations. No gentleman enters a lady's kitchen uninvited... even if it is Marlene Gray, who held my hand while her husband cheated me and had that advertising tombstone set up over poor Henry's grave. Oh life... there's only work and despair and, when that's done, comes death!"

As if at a summons, Harvey lurched forward from his corner, brandishing the bottle Jake had pacified him with. "I'll drink to that," he volunteered, but the bottle was empty. Puzzled, he tossed it aside and continued.

"Long live death!" he hailed.

"Well, why not?" Heads turned. Wayne had raised his glass, the gun still tucked in his belt. "Why not? To hell with Waldo, and his faith and policies. Where would we be without the unfortunate and unexpected. To death!" he toasted. "Long live death!"

"Long live death!" the dinner guests roared back, and raised their glasses, whether full or not. Those who did not have glasses raised their fists.

"To death!"

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